If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

[Regent]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Regent: Turning off the page file to improve performance only works in very limited instances.

Any paging slows performance, as the paged data must be read from a hard disk instead of RAM. It's not debatable. Hard disks max out at about 100Mb/s, while RAM can reach 6000Mb/s. Having no page file doesn't increase performance, it prevents degradation of performance.

During verification, BF2 reads files from the disk. It doesn't make any difference wether it's reading it from the page file, or from it's original place on the disk. It's a read operation, and hard disk performance is the only thing that really matters.

Moving the page file to a different physical disk will improve a computers performance, but it's not going to speed the verification process up 50%, which is what was stated.

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Yeah, I said it wouldn't increase 50%, but it will be an increase. Why? Because windows XP splits read/write time for "efficiency" so the HD moves the head to the read location for a few milliseconds, then moves to the write location for a few seconds, but with 2 HDs the head stays in the same place.

Any paging does decrease performance, but if you do a bit of research turning off the page file does not move everything that was paged into physical memory. While it SHOULD for some reason windows moves some into memory and leaves the rest on the disk. Without the layered FAT of the page table it's even slower to read than the page file, even though they are both on the same disk. This tweak isn't the best tweak by far for the game, I just wanted to point out to everyone that it will actually increase the game performance since people were saying it had no effect at all or saying it ruined their computer.

[|ASNL|Ragamuffin]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

What if I have 2 HDD one runs at 7200rpm the other at 5400rpm. BF2 is installed on the faster drive as is my pagefile. Windows Is installed on the slower drive.

Is this the best option or should I create a seperate partition on my slower drive ( windows drive ) for the page file?

[Regent]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

What if I have 2 HDD one runs at 7200rpm the other at 5400rpm. BF2 is installed on the faster drive as is my pagefile. Windows Is installed on the slower drive.

Is this the best option or should I create a seperate partition on my slower drive ( windows drive ) for the page file?

You should have everything installed on the 7200 RPM drive.

[|ASNL|Ragamuffin]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

You should have everything installed on the 7200 RPM drive.

Really? I know windows will run faster / starup quicker if that was the case but how much read / writing will it be doing when im playing bf2 anyway? and if it does would it not be better to be doing it to a seperate HDD as to not interfere with the heads on the BF2 / Pagefile drive?

Can I get a second opinion lol?

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

I'd say all of it on the 7200rpm drive. The slower seek time on the 5400 will slow everything down while you're waiting on the drive.

EDIT: I have a 5400RPM drive and honestly, I cannot find a difinative answer to your question. I know certainly having your programs and windows on the 7200rpm drive is the best, but it is possible having a second page file on the 5400RPM drive would be the best because of windows XP's scheduling algorithm.

[Regent]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Really, a 5400 RPM drive shouldn't be used in a gaming system, except for data storage.

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

I found a 7200rpm drive that I had lying around and tried that. It actually slowed my system down again. I did some searching and it turns out to get a performance gain it not only needs to be separate drives but on separate IDE cables as well. If you have the money.setup this could ammount to some nominal gains but I wouldn't purchase anything extra just for this.

[imported_The_Revrend]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Yeah, I said it wouldn't increase 50%, but it will be an increase. Why? Because windows XP splits read/write time for "efficiency" so the HD moves the head to the read location for a few milliseconds, then moves to the write location for a few seconds, but with 2 HDs the head stays in the same place.

Efficiency. It's not even a WINDOWS issue it's an Interface Issue. A physical limitation of the technology. It's also why Mac's went with SCSI originally and why I run SCSI on my current rig.

A single IDE (ATA/33-1333) chain cannot read and write to drives on the same IDE Chain Continuously (You addressed this in a later post a litte) It has be physically stop reading, before it can write on the same chain, which slows down disc acces in CERTIAN situations. (READ STOP WRITE. READ STOP RIGHT) for example when writing from CD ROM to HD on most commercial(Dell Compaq Etc) machines that only have 1 IDE channel with a HD and CD Player on them transfers of raw data are lower than if it were split between two IDE Channels.

SCSI Is able to read and write to devices on the same chain without the pause. (read write read write read write etc. . . ) I'm not 100% Positive on what SATA's stats ar ein this matter.

Most of the time, you are not going to be stressing your I/O to the point of having to worry about it with a game, while running an IDE based computer, however, real time music rendering or something like that, where for example your pulling 128MB of audio Samples off one section of a drive and recording a 44.1khz Stereo Wave File to another part of the same drive it can choke IDE. . . that can cause problem. <- this issue is specifically why I run SCSI.

Yes Running your Scratch disk (Page File) on a separate drive, on a separate IDE Chain from your OS Drive is a very good thing, as windows writes to the page file all the time, it will be much quicker to write from one chain to the other, no stopping of the process, it will act like somewhat like SCSI performance wise.

Ideally if you're still running a IDE based machine, you have your OS Drive As IDE Chain 1 Master , you have your optical Drive (the one you use for ripping/burning) as IDE Chain 2 master, you have a small high speed drive for your Storage/scratch disk (pagefile) on IDE Chain 2 slave, and your storage drive on IDE CHain 1 slave.

Because SCSI has so many more drives per chains I largely don't have to worry about it. . .

Currently I run,

1 9.6 GB SCSI II HD as my OS Drive.
1 72GB SCSI II HD as a DATA Drive/Scratch (Currently Failing thank god for 5 year warranties so had to move the scratch to)
1 160GB IDE as Storage/Scratch)
1 300GB IDE as Storage

I can feel a format and re-do of this system coming on. When I finish the RMA of the Failing SCSI Drive system, It will likely be done up like this.

1. 72GB SCSI split into a 20GB OS Partition and a 52GB Storage Partition
2. 9.6GB SCSI SCRATCH (Pagefile)
3. 160GB IDE Storage
4. 300GB IDE Storage

Which will have it completely optimized for music production (Will also run BF2 Very well as it does now) then I finish the gaming rig, so I never have to deal with this one again. . . only $1200 in parts left to go.

Rev

[Robske007a]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

scroll up, to large post to quote

Thank you for the support :-)

[whoosh]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

bullshyt, tested this - did nothing. myth busted

ROFLMAO

[Robske007a]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

@ REV: You clarified how HD's work, thanks for that.
I have 2 Seperate SATA HD's. And I believe there's a big difference when the pagefile is on another HD then the OS/GAME.

[Robske007a]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

I'd say all of it on the 7200rpm drive. The slower seek time on the 5400 will slow everything down while you're waiting on the drive.

EDIT: I have a 5400RPM drive and honestly, I cannot find a difinative answer to your question. I know certainly having your programs and windows on the 7200rpm drive is the best, but it is possible having a second page file on the 5400RPM drive would be the best because of windows XP's scheduling algorithm.

Yes It's possible to have the pagefile installed on a 5400RPM, but your system will run 'slower' (relative, depends on how much the pagefile is used) then on a 7200RPM.

How many RAM do you have? if you have 2GB, you even can disable the pagefile.

[imported_The_Revrend]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

@ REV: You clarified how HD's work, thanks for that.
I have 2 Seperate SATA HD's. And I believe there's a big difference when the pagefile is on another HD then the OS/GAME.

Eh, not so much how HD's work as the way the Various I/O Interfaces I'm familiar with work, but thanks for the acknowedgement. Yes Having your OS and Scratch/pagedisk on physcially diffrent disks, and plugged into their own port (I don't think that SATA has multiple devices on the same chain. . . will be a much better option. I'll see what I can find and post back here. That will be tomorrows reseach project, to find actual results of the diffrences between the two.

Rev

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Yes It's possible to have the pagefile installed on a 5400RPM, but your system will run 'slower' (relative, depends on how much the pagefile is used) then on a 7200RPM.

How many RAM do you have? if you have 2GB, you even can disable the pagefile.

This is aparently a big myth actually. According to microsoft if you turn off the page file, instead of loading everything into physical memory it just leaves it on your hard drive. This means the indexing system is different and access times are even longer. Kinda sux since I bought 2gig of ram thinking I would do this then found out it was actually slower once I tried it. Also, microsoft specifically warns against turning off your page file it also warns against moving it entirely off your boot disk because then windows can no longer create memory.dmp meaning that if your comp crashes you have no error log to check. I put that in bold because it's really important in case you want to actually know why your comp keeps crashing, even if it doesn't seem important now.

Rev: Yeah, that's why I was saying it would make windows faster across the board, not just BF2. I was really suprised though, that running a pagefile on a second physical drive on the same IDE channel actually makes windows run slower than a single pagefile. If you can find the answer to that one please post.